The Story Teller (21 page)

So this was why Good Elk wanted to see him: to convince him to talk Vicky into giving up her search for the ledger book. He said, “I take it we’re talking about Vicky Holden.”

Good Elk stopped swiveling. “I made a few inquiries. Didn’t take long to find out you and Vicky Holden work on the Wind River Reservation. I figured you gotta be friends.” He shrugged. “Point is, Father O’Malley, Cheyennes are refusing to acknowledge the inventory from the Denver Museum of the West. Same with Lakotas, Kiowas, and Comanches. Everybody’s waiting to see if the museum is hiding a ledger book that belongs to Arapahos. Everybody’s saying, what’s the museum hiding that belongs to us? Nobody trusts the museum. Whole NAGPRA process has dropped in its tracks like a shot coyote.”

Father John held up one hand. “An Arapaho ledger book on Sand Creek is missing,” he said “As soon as she finds out what happened to it—”

“There’s no Sand Creek ledger book,” Good Elk cut in. The chair squeaked as he leaned back. “There was one written by a Cheyenne warrior, but it was destroyed years ago. Only one page is extant, and it’s in a museum.”

“Todd Harris, the student who was murdered, found the book.” A theory, Father John knew, but it
made sense, and he had learned that Vicky’s theories—her instincts—had a way of being right.

“Yes, yes.” The professor waved one hand. “Rachel Foster has told me what Vicky Holden claims. How could an Arapaho warrior write about Sand Creek? No Arapahos were there. Sand Creek was a massacre of Cheyenne people.”

“The Arapaho Chief Niwot and his band were there. Fifty of them were killed.” Father John felt the hard knot of anger in his throat. Was this what drove Vicky? The flare of anger at each new injustice?

The professor fixed him with a cold stare. “You’re out of the history field, Father O’Malley. A lot of things have happened since you got stuck at a mission in the middle of Wyoming. Obviously you’re uninformed of the new scholarship. The Arapahos missed the party Colonel Chivington and Governor Evans threw for my people at Sand Creek.”

Father John drew in a long breath. “How much is the land worth that the Cheyennes hope to reclaim? Enough to rewrite history?”

Good Elk brought one fist down hard on the desk. Little piles of paper jiggled and slid sideways. Levering himself onto his feet, he said, “This isn’t about land.”

Father John was on his feet. “Don’t give me that, Good Elk. You’ve staked your reputation on a piece of revisionist history that you hope will force the government to give all the land to the Cheyenne tribe. The last thing you want is a ledger book that proves Arapahos were also at Sand Creek.”

The professor shifted his massive bulk over the desk, eyes black with rage, cheeks mottled with angry red splotches. “Let me tell you what you want, Father O’Malley.” Little specks of spittle landed on the papers. “A museum at St. Francis Mission. Well, the provincial happens to be a friend of mine. He knows what you’re after. Yesterday, at the meeting in the mountains, he
asked me what I thought. You know what I told him? The whole idea stinks. Arapahos didn’t leave behind enough artifacts to fill up a garage.” He stopped. Pulling himself upright, he drew in a long breath. “The provincial takes my advice. I am, after all, a Native American. Tomorrow when I meet him, I can tell him I’ve changed my mind. That the museum at St. Francis Mission would be a fine idea. I guarantee you’ll have your museum this summer.”

“Let me guess,” Father John said, struggling to contain his fury. “All I have to do is convince Vicky Holden to give up any notion of a Sand Creek ledger book.”

The professor nodded. “Soon as Arapahos give up this preposterous notion, the rest of us can get on with the business of reclaiming our artifacts. I’m offering you a good deal, Father O’Malley.”

“No deal.” Father John swept one hand across the desk. A pile of books thudded against the floor. He turned and walked out of the office.

20

V
icky hurried through the patterns of sunshine falling across the plaza in front of the Denver Police Department complex. Two buildings of sand-colored brick, massive and impersonal symbols of authority, formed an L along the plaza. A young couple—Hispanic, perhaps, faces grim—exited the wide glass doors of the building on the right. Vicky let herself into the other building, nearly colliding with a couple of uniformed policemen on their way out.

The stretch of lobby across the front was dim and cool as a vault. A murmur of voices floated from the roped-off area in the far corner where a sprinkling of people sat hunched in metal-framed chairs. Straight ahead was a reception counter, and beyond, a four-foot-high wooden railing that blocked off access to a bank of elevators.

Digging through her black bag for a business card, Vicky crossed to the counter, heels clacking against the brown-tiled floor. She handed the card to a policewoman behind the counter and asked to see Detective Clark.

“Gotta have a look at your driver’s license,” the policewoman said, examining the card.

Another fishing expedition in her purse, and Vicky slid the license across the counter.

The policewoman studied the miniature photo, glancing up at Vicky several times. Then: “Detective Clark know what this is about?”

“Please ring him,” Vicky said, using her lawyer tone.

The policewoman picked up the telephone. There was a quick exchange of information, followed by a nod toward the roped-off area. “Wait there.”

Vicky took a seat offering an unobstructed view of the elevators. A couple of young women in cutoff jeans and T-shirts slouched on chairs to her left. Across from her were three middle-aged men, bony, roughened hands clasped between knees, red-rimmed eyes staring at the floor, exuding an air of resignation and hopelessness. What had brought them here? she wondered. What terrible events?

There was a loud ping, and the elevator doors parted. Steve Clark stepped out. Vicky jumped to her feet and hurried over to the gate in the railing that he held open. “A social call, I hope,” he said.

“I’ve got some new information,” Vicky said, her arm inadvertently brushing his as she walked past.

Steve snapped the gate into place and hit the elevator button. “I’m in the information business,” he said as the doors splayed open and they stepped inside. He pushed another button and leaned against the side wall, smiling at her.

They exited on the fourth floor and walked down a carpeted corridor past a series of closed doors. The air felt warm and close, as if the air-conditioning didn’t extend into the corridors. From somewhere came the soft clacking sound of a keyboard, the muffled screech of a phone. Another policeman in civilian clothes, a thick file folder in hand, came toward them. There was the typical hurried male exchange, Vicky thought, that had nothing to do with communication: “How’s it going? Can’t complain.”

Steve opened a door and motioned her into a large room with about a dozen desks arranged in rows, a chalkboard covered with white scribblings on the left wall, and on the far wall, windows that framed a patch
of blue sky and the white peaks of the mountains. The room was deserted except for two men huddled together at a desk in the center, voices low and intense. Neither looked up as Steve led her over to the desk against the window.

“This is where I ponder the world,” he said, one fist thumping the desktop. Neat stacks of folders and papers trailed around the edges. In one corner, the photo of a little girl with long blond hair looked out from a small silver frame. “Kathy, my daughter,” he said, following Vicky’s eyes.

Vicky smiled at him. She didn’t know Steve had a child. Fatherhood suited him, she thought. She took the chair he’d pulled over for her.

“So what do you bring me?” The detective dropped into the swivel chair behind the desk and leaned back toward the window.

“A theory.” Vicky felt the jittery flutters in her stomach that she always felt when she was about to sum up a case before the jury, pull together scattered pieces of evidence, weave a story that made sense. She launched into what she had pieced together: a graduate student documenting the sites of his people’s villages and battlefields, stumbling across a ledger book lost in a museum, recognizing the story of a massacre that occurred more than a hundred years before, ending up murdered because he had found the book.

Little furrows came into the detective’s forehead and questions flashed in his eyes. The story sounded far-fetched even to her own ears, a tale as thin and insubstantial as the pages in an old ledger book. She hurried on, explaining how the government had promised lands in Colorado to the people of Sand Creek—lands never actually allotted—and how the ledger book proved Arapahos had been in the village.

Steve ran his fingers along the edge of his chin. “If what you’re telling me is true, the museum will have records.”

“They’re gone,” she said. “Anything that connects the ledger book to the museum is gone. That’s why the killer ransacked Todd’s apartment and took his computer—to destroy any reference to the book.”

The detective swirled sideways and glanced out the window a moment. “Let me get this straight,” he said, looking back. “Todd Harris was murdered over an old Indian ledger book and a massacre that happened way back in history.”

“A ledger book worth more than a million dollars.” Vicky kept her voice steady, firm. “A ledger book that proves Arapahos are entitled to lands worth even more.” She jumped to her feet and walked over to the window. Traffic threaded along Thirteenth Avenue below, a silent procession broken by the occasional squeal of brakes.

She turned back. “Suppose the museum curator saw the chance to make a lot of money from an artifact everybody had forgotten existed. I happen to know Rachel Foster could use some money.” There was resistance in his eyes. She plunged on: “Suppose a scholar by the name of Bernard Good Elk claims that only Cheyennes were at Sand Creek. What would he do if a ledger book that proved otherwise suddenly surfaced?”

Steve was tapping a pencil against the edge of the desk, a hard, steady rhythm. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s assume this million-dollar ledger book exists, and Todd Harris discovered it. There is another possibility.”

“Don’t say it.” Vicky held up one hand, fingers outstretched. If he spoke the words, they would take on the weight of truth. “Todd Harris is not the one who took the book.”

“You don’t know that.”

That was true. She had no proof, only a sense of
what was true, of what Todd would have done. She said, “Todd would have shown the book to someone in the museum—the research librarian, maybe the curator herself. He would have expected the museum to protect the book. That’s what museums do.”

Steve held her gaze a moment before sliding a folder off one of the stacks. “A million dollars buys a lot of heroin, Vicky,” he said, weariness in his voice. “It could pay off a lot of drug suppliers.” He opened the folder and lifted out a printed page. “The autopsy report,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to tell you. Todd Harris’s system was full of heroin.”

Vicky was standing behind her chair. She grabbed the top. The wood grain felt rough against her palms. “There has to be some explanation, Steve.”

“Why?” An irritation in his tone now. “Because Todd Harris was Arapaho, and Arapaho kids never do drugs? Let me tell you, I’ve seen dead kids of every color and stripe shot up with heroin and a lot of drugs you haven’t even heard of. Why should Todd Harris be any different?”

“I knew him,” Vicky said slowly, measuring the words.

Steve leaned forward. “There were needle tracks on his right arm.”

“Right arm?” Vicky stepped around and dropped onto the edge of the chair. “Todd was right-handed, Steve. Somebody wanted it to look as if he’d shot heroin.”

“You’re a stubborn woman, Vicky.” The detective slipped the report back inside the folder and stared at her a long moment. Then: “Okay, there’s the possibility the tracks were fresh.”

“What? You knew this?”

“It’s a possibility. We don’t know for certain. The body was in the water at least twelve hours. It was pretty bruised.”

Vicky gathered her handbag and got to her feet.
What was she thinking? That she could send a homicide detective on a wild-goose chase after a ledger book when the evidence he needed—the evidence he wanted—was at his fingertips? “You’re not going to look into the ledger book, are you?”